A Tiny Tale

Fifi was a girl, she always wore a yellow raincoat, and had big curly red hair. Fifi had been confronted with some peculiar problems in her life. That is, it started out as some minor peculiarities that, as her situation progressed, became a little more problematic. Fifi had a whole bunch of dreams stuck in her hair. She was well aware that her hair was the kind made to hold foreign subjects. She could have smuggled tons of illegal substances through any airport security, because nobody had ever tried to feel up her hairdo, and nothing had ever fallen out of her tight curls. The popcorn that people threw to the screen in the cinema, that somehow always seemed to gravitate towards her head, the notes she carried in her hair when she felt she needed some extra help during tests in school, and the lost hairpins that sometimes vanished in there for weeks. She had been able to live with the objects in her hair all her life, but those dreams had a quality that made it all the more impossible for her to be remove them; they were invisible. She could feel them dangling on strands of hair, she could feel them swaying from one side of her head to the other (dreams she was convinced had a Tarzan-complex,) and sometimes she even felt them jump up above her head to land in her hair a fraction of a second later (Flying fish dreams.) Whatever she tried, she could not catch them.

She attempted to explain this problem to other people, but one by one they would shake their heads and say; “you are crazy, silly girl” or “that’s impossible, dreams are way, way too big for that!” Those people somehow believed that dreams are really big, and that one dream alone would occupy the entire head and then still circle around it in a bubble. Fifi knew that this was a big and common misconception. Dreams are actually really, really tiny. They sure can seem big, but they are small, and sneaky, and fast. They have the ability to come across as entire days while they actually only took up the 5 minutes in-between the 2 snoozes of a morning alarm clock.  

At one point a boy pulled on Fifi’s hair fast and unexpectedly, and accidentally pulled a dream out that wasn't paying attention. She turned around and wanted to thank him, but he shrieked loud at the invisible sense of movement he felt in his hand, he threw it on the floor and started jumping around like a maniac. He crushed it. Completely. Fifi couldn't see, but she heard a very audible crackling under the boy’s foot. It sounded like a Christmas ornament falling to the floor, a little higher in tone maybe. For a few days after that the other dreams lay low, they stopped moving abruptly and only when avoiding a hair brush she felt them slightly changing positions. But as soon as they felt the coast was clear, they started acting like their usual selves again.

After several failed attempts of dream detachment through lice comb sessions, some heavy head banging,  a few roller coaster rides and one terrifying sky dive, Fifi started to try approaching this problem from another angle. So, she wrote down all the dreams she had ever had, and started to live them out. She began by going into a café in the fun part of town, and without asking the bar owner, she opened the lid of the piano and starting playing songs. She immediately  felt one dream pop and flutter away with the light but fast sound of butterfly wings. Then afterwards she collected the courage to start dancing in the middle of the street, and made other people dance with her. When she had about three of four people dancing with along, another dream popped! She started to understand what she had to do, and the following days were filled with activities that used to scare her, but that she always wanted to do. Going to a restaurant alone, Pop! Signing up for a tap-dance course, Pop! Placing ads in the paper to start a band, Pop! Taking the train to a place she had never seen before, Pop! She started feeling really good during those days, and when all the dreams that she could make come true by herself had fluttered out of her hair, she knew it was time to call him. 

Elliott was, in every sense, the boy of Fifi’s dreams. She had known him since they were little, but they were both too shy to start a conversation. He always wore a blue raincoat and had short brown curls. They had looked each other in the eyes when they ran into each other, he had held open doors for her, they had picked up each other’s books when they fell to the floor, closely observed each other’s movements and language, but never did they manage to talk. Elliott had to be called, the leftover dreams urged Fifi to do it. They acted crazier than ever when she sat by the phone contemplating what she was going to say to him. Finally she picked up the horn, dialed his number and as soon as she heard him say “Hello?” said; 

“You have been on my mind forever, and I would like to ask you if you could help me live some dreams, so they stop twisting my hair into knots, and quit building little nests there that breed more little dreams. Little dreams about you! I have lived all the ones that I could live alone. For all the dreams that are left I need you. They seem to multiply with the hour, and this will soon be unmanageable. I can't concentrate, nor sit still, and it’s really nibbling at the borders of my sanity. I want to be with you, and we have to buy a little house on a mountain fast, and paint it 325 shades of gold.” 

Elliott immediately recognized Fifi’s voice, and after she spoke, a dream popped and fluttered away on both ends of the telephone line. And so they did everything that they had stuck in their hair, and more. Up till this day they still live in that little golden house on the mountain, that sparkles with life and contentment.